Highly Underrated Fish - Orange Stripe Bristletooth Tangs

Of all the Tangs that are common in aquarium stores, one of the least talked about are the Bristletooth or Combtooth Tangs. These fish all belong to the Genus Ctenochaetus. Cteno translates loosely as Comb, and Chaetus translates loosely as Bristle, so really, this group of fish are the Comb-Bristle Tangs, but we digress. That got this name because they have tons of really small teeth and these choppers are “flexible,” which helps them scrape food off of rocks. They live mostly on biofilm, detritus, algae and all of the little critters that live in this stuff (which actually makes up a surprisingly large portion of their diet). There are only nine species in this group, and all of them can make good aquarium inhabitants.

One of the lesser known of these is the Orange Stripe Bristletooth Tang (Ctenochaetus cf striatus). They also get called Striated Tangs, Orange Dotted Bristletooth Tangs and Lined Bristletooth Tangs (or Surgonfish). These gorgeous fish start out a shimmering blue with orange spots around their eyes, and a few wide orange stripes down their bodies. As they mature, they'll become a burnt orange with a light blue/green head; they'll retain the spots around their eyes and will gain fine blue stripes down their side and along their fins. The internet abounds with reports that these fish will get bigger than ten inches long and while this is possible, they'll hit maturity around six inches, and specimens longer than eight inches are absolute unicorns (not Unicorn Tangs, just rare).

Another common knowledge about all Bristletooth Tangs and the Orange Stripe among them, comes in relation to feeding them. No matter what you read, or who wrote it, Orange Stripes can't just live on grazing the liverock in your tank. These fish need more food than that, and also more protein. The Nutramar Algae and Color Boost Shots are absolutely perfect food for this fish and all Ctenochaetus genus Tangs. The shots can be stuck to the rocks and glass where the tang can graze on them, just like their normal feeding behavior, and they offer a perfect balance of protein and greenery for their digestive tracts. Bristletooth Tangs will almost always take frozen food fairly quickly, and so things like Brine Plus Spirulina and Brine Plus Omega from Gamma Foods is a good way to get them started and then you can start working on getting them used to Nutramar Pellets and we recommend the same formula here. You can supplement this diet with Nori and Ogo from Nutramar, and while this isn't their favorite way to get algae into their diet, they will take it, and it is important.

Next uncommon knowledge about Ctenochaetus cf striatus is that it doesn't love eating hair algae. Their teeth are excellent at scraping rocks of biofilm, which they'll do all day long, but sometimes you'll see them tear hair algae off the rock and not consume it. The point here is you shouldn't add Orange Stripe Bristletooth Tangs to a tank with robust and established hair algae growth and expect them to clean it up; instead, add them to a biologically mature aquarium with quite a bit of rock, and you'll never really develop the hair algae to start with, because they'll keep them rocks scraped of anything that could turn into the long, flowy green mats that no one wants.

When planning your display for this beautiful fish, start with a big enough tank, expect a fish with an adult size of seven or eight inches. With this size and the grazing behavior, the bigger tank you have, the better; we'd recommend a tank of at least 125 gallons. This aquarium should feature plenty of live rock for them to hide in, swim through and graze on. They love high flow displays, which mimics the reef edges where they get collected. Incorporate strong filtration to keep the water clean, and utilize extra water moving devices to get them enough flow, look for 10-20 times the whole tank volume in flow or more. They would be fine with a sand bed but will also do perfectly well in bare bottom displays without it, as that just offers them more surface area to graze on.

They're also good in reef tanks and are unlikely in the extreme to bother corals. You will occasionally see people talk about Bristletooths bothering their invertebrates, but this is usually due to that coral being in poor health and having some fine algae or biofilm growing on it; on a related note, they can bother clams by grazing on the shells, but this won't usually impact the clam negatively. They're also very peaceful with other fish, including other tangs as long as they are added together, or look very different. We wouldn't recommend keeping them with other Bristletooth Tangs, but they'd be just fine with species from other genus. They are strong swimmers, who will learn mealtime well, and so they might out compete more timid fish for food, and we wouldn't recommend keeping them with very timid eaters like Sleeper Gobies, Firefish etc.

There are good reasons that the Orange Bristletooth Tang is a staff favorite around here. We all love a fish that is beautiful and different, and slightly out of the spotlight, so you don't see them all that often. It doesn't hurt that they are also super durable, useful, peaceful and reef safe to boot. It ticks every box on our Highly Underrated Fish scoring sheet. If you've been looking for a peaceful showpiece fish that not everyone under the sun has, and is just the ticket for keeping the algae at bay, you've found your fish. Ask your Local Fish Store about getting you and Orange Stripe Bristletooth Tang (Ctenochaetus cf striatus) today!